


Bees!

by Janice_Lester



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1266181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janice_Lester/pseuds/Janice_Lester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bees! On a ship!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bees!

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic in July 2010 and it has languished with very occasional attention since then. It is at last finished, at least in the sense that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, in the appropriate order. It's still a bit rough, but I think it works. Beta'd by and art provided by [](http://nix-this.livejournal.com/profile)[nix_this](http://nix-this.livejournal.com/). Crackiness.

  
[](http://penguinz.nfshost.com/Bees.jpg)   
art by [](http://nix-this.livejournal.com/profile)[**nix_this**](http://nix-this.livejournal.com/)  


“I’m a good captain,” Jim insisted. Okay, so he was pacing incessantly up and down his deck one office, which wasn’t a good look, and occasionally stopping to glare at himself in the full-length mirror on the far wall, which was also probably not a good look, but the point remained. “I’m caring and considerate. When you told me Spock needed an outlet for his grief and shit, I listened. I even gave him that space on the cargo deck, even though it was mighty inconvenient for the engineering guys and their spares and I had to bribe Scotty’s parts guy with the promise of cheap beer and loose men next time we pull in for shore-leave. I really go the extra mile for my crew, Bones.”

“You sure do.”

That classic McCoy drawl warned him he was being mocked. Jim ignored it.

“So tell me, Bones, what have I done to deserve—to deserve all this shit?” He hit the appropriate portion of the terminal screen as he passed, triggering playback.

“ _Chief Medical Officer’s Log, stardate—oh, damn it, the computer will automagically append the stardate.”_ The recorded voice of Leonard McCoy faded out, and in came the computer’s dispassionate feminine tones. _“It is stardate 2259.01.”_ McCoy’s log resumed. _“It’s 1700 and change. Lieutenant Sulu’s just been admitted, unconscious, to medical. No one knows why, but it you ask me, he’s suffering the effects of a Vulcan nerve pinch.”_ Jim would swear the subsequent McCoy eye-roll was perfectly audible just before the end of the recording.

Jim did his best to communicate through energetic gesticulation just what kind of bizarre-ity they’d just heard. “I mean, _what the fuck,_ Bones? And then you woke him up and he told you that Spock knocked him out because he killed Spock’s bee?”

Bones shrugged, leaning further back in his chair and crossing his ankles. “He said that one of those weird alien venus flytrap things he keeps as pets down in Botany happened to get a hold of one of Spock’s precious bees. T’Susan, I think Sulu said. Spock flipped out and blamed him.”

Yeah, okay, so some things didn’t actually get any better the second time you heard them. Assault on a fellow officer was, of course, a court-martial offence, and no board worth its salt was going to declare that Spock taking revenge on the owner of a potted plant for killing one of his gazillion bees was reasonable. Jim sighed and rubbed his forehead. He was actually getting a bit tired. How long had he been pacing?

“How’d you feel about putting Spock on medical leave or something? Keeping him in for psychiatric evaluation for a couple days?”

Bones winced. “Psycho-analysis of a Vulcan by a non-telepath would be more guesswork than—”

Jim huffed. A captain was allowed the odd huff now and then, right? “I don’t need you to diagnose and fix him. I just want him out of my hair for a day or two.”

“All right, Jim. You got it.”

Jim smiled, even in the midst of this madness. That was _loyalty_ right there. He was a good captain, oh, yes.

***

Spock had been confined to Medical (where, Jim had been informed, he was sitting placidly on a bio-bed playing endless games of chess with the computer) for all of six hours before his bees decided to go on a rampage. They were supposed to be confined to one deck, which gave them access to their hives in the cargo bay and the flowers and shit in the Botany section. They weren’t supposed to be able to get into the turbolifts and jeffries tubes, to start appearing on the bridge and in the conference rooms and in the captain’s personal bathroom while he was innocently reading the annual Andorian Ice Queens issue of _Playbeing_ and taking a dump. They were not supposed to start stinging people, thereby providing the following hitherto unknown facts:  


  1. these bees could sting humans without losing their stings. So they could sting multiple times without suffering any apparent ill effects. They were therefore not normal Earth-type honey bees,
  

  2. their stings produced a variety of abnormal responses in humans. Jim was getting reports from all over the ship: Ensign Bates had attempted to eat the shuttlecraft _Galileo_. Yeoman Iti was dancing on mess hall tables. Boris the Engineer had taken it into his head to repaint his duty station a decidedly non-regulation pink. Nurse Chapel’s brown roots were showing, and rather than dye them she’d shorn her hair so it now appeared she had blonde-tipped spikes. (It was very punk rock of her. Jim approved.) Chekov had begun insisting loudly that Mother Russia had always been ruled by bees. The quartermaster had taken to bellowing sea shanties over the intercom at random intervals during every duty shift. (This was extra fascinating since, as far as Jim was aware, the quartermaster hailed from the Yukon, with nary an ocean in sight.)
  

  3. the angry buzzing appeared to be increasing in direct proportion to the length of time Spock was absent from circulation. He had apparently been a calming influence.
  

  4. the bees were thickly concentrated around sickbay, even in the ventilation ducts and jefferies tubes in that vicinity, as if determined to reach Spock.



  
Jim listened to the reports, shut his communicator, wiped his ass, set aside his magazine, fixed his clothes, waited to be sure the toilet would autoflush, washed his hands with soap and water for a full thirty seconds so as to avoid having anything to feel guilty about during the next inevitable Bones lecture on The Shocking State of Hygiene On This Ship (Goddamnit, I’m A Doctor, Not A Preschool Teacher), and then stormed down to Medical as fast as his awesome, shapely legs would carry him to ask Spock what in the sweet fresh hell was happening on his ship.

Spock was lying on the bio-bed engaged in a deep discussion of what seemed to be early Etruscan philosophy with the gold-and-black bee presently perched on the tip of his nose. (Damn thing must have slipped in through the life support vents.) Spock somehow managed to maintain his dignity even while cross-eyed and engaging an insect in deep conversation. Asshole.

“Excuse me,” Spock said-- _to the bee_. He sat up. The bee climbed up into his hairline and turned, hunkering down to watch Jim with its beady black eyes. “Captain, this is S’Plato. S’Plato, this is Captain Kirk.”

“No need to get up,” Jim said quickly. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder whether he might be allergic to these bees. He wasn’t allergic to Earth bees, but these were not bees as he knew them, _were they?_ “Hello, Spock. How are you feeling?”

“I am well, Jim,” said Spock easily.

“Do, um, do all your bees have names?”

Spock’s left eyebrow rose. “Of course, Captain.”

“That’s—” he was going to say ‘cute’, but thought better of it “—awesome.” He realised he had run out of smalltalk, or else it’d been scared away by the way S’Plato was staring as if identifying the choicest morsels of Jim’s exposed skin. So he cut right to the heart of the matter, like a good captain. A brooks-no-nonsense-type captain. A handsome, efficient, leaderly captain. “Do you think you could ask your bees nicely to go back to their hive and stop attacking the crew?”

Spock frowned slightly as he considered this. “I could ask,” he conceded.

“Excellent. I’ll have McCoy release you right—”

“But I doubt they would comply.”

Jim did a double-take. “Huh?”

“They are understandably emotional over the tragic and entirely preventable death of T’Susan, and the subsequent human indifference to their loss. They are also, S’Plato tells me, extremely displeased at my recent incarceration in sickbay. I do not believe they will return to their former quietude without some kind of amends being made by the humanoid occupants of this vessel.”

“Amends. How do we make amends to a flock of bees?”

“Bees do not _flock_ , Captain, they—”

“Yes, yes, Spock. Amends: how?”

“Perhaps an offering of suitable flora and classical music.”

Jim felt he really ought to get _some_ kind of Vulcan high-five or something for the superior effort he made to suppress his laughter. All the craziness they’ve encountered on this tour had effectively raised his what-the-fuck threshold. “Brahms do? I like Brahms.”

Spock’s eyelids fluttered closed, and Jim gathered he was “listening” to Splatter the Bee, or whatever, again.

“That should be sufficient, if Her Majesty is in a good mood. I wish you success.”

There were no words for how thoroughly Jim disliked being dismissed by his First Officer. “You’re coming with me, Mister.”

Spock attempted to stare him down. Fortunately, Jim Kirk was fucking fearless.

Which was how Jim found himself an hour later walking into bee central wearing a loincloth (Spock insisted) and sandals, with a wreath of fresh flowers in his hair, with no phaser and no security detail and with a loopy-looking Spock ambling vaguely along beside him. Humming. Wagner, if Jim wasn’t mistaken.

“Computer, play ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’, would you?”

Mad, whirling music filled the corridors.

The way Spock flipped the bird through the medium of mobile eyebrows alone let Jim know that his wit had been found wanting. Well, too fucking bad. ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ was a _classic_.

Spock escorted him to the main hive, and Jim dropped to his knees to make the most fucking theatrical bow he could devise. He wanted to ask if this was really truly absolutely necessary, but the look on Spock’s face warned him that the answer would not be any different from the three previous times he’d asked.

“Oh bees,” he cried, “hear me! Accept my offering!” He took the wreath from his head and placed it carefully on the deck plate ahead of him.

A few dozen bees came buzzing out of the hive, circled his head several times--Jim’s hand twitched compulsively towards the anti-anaphylaxis hypo he’d stashed in his waistband--then descended on the wreath and carried it away. Then a single bee emerged, zoomed past, and, as Jim sat up and turned, alighted on Spock’s nose. They held a brief confab. Spock was still managing to pull off the whole cross-eyed-dignity-during-confab-with-bee thing.

“It would seem you are improperly attired to commence negotiations,” Spock announced.

Jim frowned. “But I put on the loincloth and everything!”

“Improperly attired,” Spock repeated. “Please hold very still.”

Jim swallowed hard. He did _not_ like the sound of that. Especially when about ten bazillion bees came flying at him and landed on his face. Sixty seconds later he had a fucking _beard of bees_. Wriggling, squirming, crawling all over each other and him _bees._

_We are not amused, Spock. We are not amused._

Spock observed the bee beard with a small smile, tilted his head as if listening, then offered Jim a half-bow. “You may open the discussions.”

Jim very much hoped that the movements required of his mouth and related apparatus for speech would not, you know, inflame the bees into a murderous rage or anything. “Um, hello, bees. We’d quite like it if you’d all stick to this deck, rather than sneaking out to roam the rest of the ship and attack the crew. We understand how, uh, tragic it was for you to lose T’Susan so, you know, tragically, and if there was anything we could do to bring her back, we, of course, um, would. Yeah.” A bee tried to crawl into Jim's ear, making him twitch irritably. “And of course Spock will be released from medical supervision as soon as he’s deemed fit. So, do you think we could all just get along now?”

There was a buzzing, squirming, horrible not-silence.

Spock once more gave the impression of listening intently. His face showed nothing at all. “Unacceptable,” he pronounced.

The bees scattered in every direction, as if a water balloon had burst. A water balloon full of bees. Jim’s Captain-sense was tingling--that probably wasn’t a _good_ sign. He looked to Spock for confirmation.

“Captain,” Spock said serenely, “I believe it would be advisable for you to run.”

Jim thought about it, logically, from every angle. But not until he had sprinted halfway back to the turbolift.

Spock made no attempt to join him in his escape.

***

“So,” Jim said--trying to ignore the yeoman who was chasing the sole-remaining bee in the conference room with a humane-capture trap Medical had contrived from old petri dishes or something. The necessity of avoiding escalation by way of squishy-bee death had perhaps been too firmly impressed upon him; his attempts bordered on timid--“Scotty, dear Scotty, good Scotty, awesome Scotty. How are you doing?”

On the screen, Scotty could only be seen in brief flashes as he bobbed and weaved around the warp core, attempting to avoid a swarm of uninvited buzzy guests. He was a good egg, Scotty. “Yes, Captain? Something I can help you with?”

“We’re hoping you can flood the ship with a sedating gas Bones is working on that only affects bees.”

“What’s that, Captain?” Scotty seemed to be slightly distracted by the three or four bees currently stinging him. But he was a trooper, and pushed through it. “A gas? Yeah, I could do that. But it’d take a fair bit of crawling about the jeffries tubes. The bees have gummed up the works a bit, and besides, I’ll have to jimmy up a workaround for the protocols that specifically prevent flooding the whole ship with gas. A safety feature, you know?”

“Good, good.” Jim raised his voice over the sound of enraged buzzing Scotty’s end. “So we’ll get the gas down to you, and you’ll do the deed. Thanks, Scotty. Kirk out.”

Well, that was plan B. Jim was vaguely relieved that it didn’t involve fire. However, he had a feeling he needed to start coming up with plans C, D, E, and F right about now.

***

Bones looked up from the too-still head of security’s Ensign Toews, which he was cradling in his capable surgeon’s hands. “He’s dead, Jim.”

_“Fuck.”_

The familiar sounds of a tricorder scanning were distinctly uncomforting.

“Looks like the apitoxin does build up to lethal levels. I’m guessing thirty, forty stings?”

“That’s fucking _wonderful_ , Bones. Any chance we can, I dunno, find an antidote conveniently in the store cupboard and inject everyone preventatively?”

“Possibly.” He took a despondent swig from a very familiar hip flask. Which was not at all comforting, either. “I’ll look into it. In the meantime…”

“Yeah, Bones?”

“Don’t get stung.”

Jim could drink to that.

***

Spock wandered lonely as a cloud, living for the next moment one of his bees came to visit, and the next, and the next, and the next. Each sting was a delicious pain that spread warmth through him. Each glorious message they shared with him filled him with the peace of true enlightenment. Each moment he was alone pained him to the core. Only his friends made going on worthwhile. But that was all right. The bees would always be there. The bees would always take care of him. He was their loyal servant, and they valued loyal service.

Spock listened politely as T’Rowling unveiled her plan for seizing control of the strange mechanical hive in which they now found themselves. Spock was to be instrumental. He found this much more appealing than S’Meyer’s scheme to control the human slaves with poorly thought-out propaganda and distracting rhetoric on the power of Free Will.

Spock found himself whistling ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ as he worked to disable certain normal _Enterprise_ functions, but did not trouble himself to wonder why that particular piece of Earth music should be on his mind.

***

“Your venus flytrap thing,” Jim repeated, more slowly. “Can you clone it? Enhance its growth? Produce a super-duper huge, preferably mobile, insect-seducing, bee-melting botanical menace?”

Sulu went up on both elbows to stare at Jim. He really looked very small lying all tucked up in a bio-bed instead of manoeuvring starships and pointy things. “Come again?”

Jim sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He needed a day at a quality spa, he really did. “Look, the bees are taking over the ship. Do you have any suggestions for how to stop them?”

“Mites?” Sulu suggested. “Birds? Poison?”

Jim made the _go on, go on, I’m waiting_ arm gesture.

“I’m gonna have to think about it and get back to you, sir. Do you think you could get me, you know, released from sickbay now?”

Some people had no grasp of priorities.

***

“Two antagonistic bee factions?” Jim repeated stupidly.

“I believe so, Captain,” Dehner said. Her triumphant smile seemed a trifle inappropriate, given the circumstances. “I’ve carefully charted and analysed their movements and behaviour. One group is clearly attempting to infiltrate all decks and areas of the ship. Commander Spock is with them. The other swarm is focusing its efforts around computer terminals and personnel on the cargo deck. Ask the computer, you’ll find that neither Spock nor the bees he’s currently associating with have been back to their hives all day. I think we’re looking at a—at an apian civil war.”

She virtually glowed with smugness. Kirk didn’t blame her. He’d feel pretty fucking smug too if he’d just managed to remember the word for _of or relating to bees_ off the top of his head.

“So, um, Doctor Dehner. What do you suggest we _do_ with this information?”

She shrugged beautifully, she really did. “I’ve no idea. Not my department.”

Jim mentally crossed her off the promotion list.

***

After a lot of searching, Jim managed to track down Bones. Who was wandering about Medical in an EVA suit wielding a very large can of what appeared to be old-fashioned flyspray. Jim had to dodge the spray and rap on his helmet to get his attention, at which point Bones grudgingly lifted his visor.

“Yeah, Jim?”

“I want a way to get through to Spock. Clearly, the bees have him under some kind of Awesome Apian Mind Control.” Yep, ‘apian’ was just one of those words that made a person feel smug. “I want you to fix him.”

“And how do you suggest I go about that? I don’t have access to the patient to run scans or administer medications.”

Jim sighed and wished less of his job involved coaching other people in doing theirs. But he had to cut Bones some slack; it was possible he’d been stung at least once already, and at best that damn venom made you a bit dopey. “We can get you limited info from sensors. And presumably you did some scanning earlier. You have access to bees, so you can study their venom. There aren’t any other Vulcans on board, but having a look at _anyone_ who’s been stung ought to give you an idea of the effects of the venom. You know, biochemically or pharmokinetically or whatever. And, if all else fails, someone can take your stellar example, put on a suit, and go pay him a visit with a medical scanner. Please, Bones. I need to see some progress somewhere.”

“Fine,” Bones said, raising a gloved hand ready to lower his visor once more. “I’ll be in touch.”

Jim sincerely hoped he would.

***

On the screen, Spock visibly trembled beneath his coronet of live bees. His blinks were elongated, as if he were more than half asleep.

“We need to talk,” Jim said.

Spock shut his eyes and flared his nostrils. “You will surrender. Your device will be dismantled. Negotiation is futile.”

“You’re right. Negotiation’s futile. So I’m gonna need you to return the ship to my control, and call all your bees back to the cargo deck. Or I’ll activate the device--” he waved the impressively big red button menacingly ”--and all the bees will die.” Fortunately, it seemed that Spock and the bees had more confidence in Scotty’s invention than Jim did.

Spock smiled. It was eerie. “You will accede to our demands. Or we will kill the one known as Spock.” And Jim realised, perhaps a little late in the game, that his First Officer was no longer merely relaying information; something had him on strings, something was speaking _through_ him.

And that would be Jim’s heartbeat, ratcheting up to panic mode. He had to fight to maintain the appearance of calm. “You wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be logical. He’s the only one on your side with opposable thumbs.”

Spock opened his eyes again, and he looked dazed but vaguely Spock-like. Jim felt the tiniest dainty flower of hope start to blossom deep in his manly bosom. “Not… logical?”

“Hella illogical, really.” Jim did his best Super Wide Sincere Eyes, then nodded rapidly a few times for good measure. “Spock is the only one of you who can efficiently operate the machinery and fly this ship. Without him, how are you going to prevent the ship from crashing into a star and frying you all?”

There was silence a while but for a certain amount of buzzing. Jim wasn’t sure if it was an angry buzz or more of a contemplative buzz, but he took a deep breath and tried to keep his voice steady and conversational.

“So, you can kill Spock and, sooner or later, die when the ship inevitably crashes because there’s no one with hands at the helm. Or you can carry on as you are, and all your bees will die when we activate the device.” He waved the Big Red Button again for emphasis. “I’m thinking those aren’t sounding like great options to you guys right now. So, your other choice is to be clever little bees and negotiate with the pesky humans. I’ll let you stop and ponder that a moment. To be sure you reach the most _logical_ decision.” Once again, something like recognition flashed in Spock’s eyes. Jim hoped he wasn’t just imagining it. “Ask yourselves, hey, what would Surak do?”

And there it was again. A look of definite Spockishness came over Spock’s features. Sort of like blankness, but not. It was that expression, so familiar from countless hours on the bridge together or on deadly away missions on previously unknown worlds, a look of blankness that nonetheless betrayed hints of serious things going on underneath. As Jim watched, a bee came in for a landing on his left cheek, and Spock batted it irritably away while continuing to stare thoughtfully at the viewscreen.

***

The second attempt at parleying with the bees looked rather more promising from the outset. For one thing, loincloths were optional this time. For another, Spock looked slightly less crazed.

“So, um,” Jim offered into the silence, “what I’m thinking is that we find a nice, habitable planet for the bees to settle. Somewhere with no intelligent life and therefore no Prime Directive implications. And we set you guys up down there, plant lots of things you can eat and pollinate, test all the local flora and fauna so we can tell you what’s safe for you, and just generally make Planet Beehive comfortable and perfect for you all.”

There was a long, long interval of barely-perceptible hissing. Then Spock said “The two bee factions would require geographical separation.”

“Can do.”

“And computer and communications equipment, operable purely via touch. The sensors will need to be calibrated for inputs of less than one gram. The bees will wish to continue to educate themselves, and to retain the possibility of communication with the rest of civilisation.”

Jim kept his smile firmly in place and tried to ignore the cold sweat on his back. He hoped bees couldn’t sense emotions or smell fear-pheromones or whatever. “Sure, we can do that.” He paused, squeezed his hand into a painful fist behind his back. “So do we have an agreement?”

Spock bowed his head. “Contingent upon the bees’ approval of the chosen location, and the good faith of the _Enterprise_ crew in establishing the colony.”

Jim’s sigh was so intense it was almost a whistle.

***

Two weeks later, things were more or less back to rights aboard the good ship _Enterprise_. Every last bee had been collected up and carefully transported down to the two colonies on the surface of the garden-like Ceti Alpha V. The warring bee factions’ colonies were safely separated by a glorious turquoise ocean. Scotty had retrofitted communications equipment for apian operation cheerfully enough, but had left the actual testing to subordinates. The poor man had developed a pronounced startle reaction to buzzing noises, which Doctor Dehner had pledged to help him overcome so that the sound of a live wire sparking or a dud comm speaker hissing would no longer send him diving under the nearest console. A greater irritation was Bones’s insistence on wearing a full EVA suit anytime he was going to be in the same room as Spock, which complicated Spock’s post-bee-control sickbay treatment and promised to render staff meetings somewhat absurd once the first officer returned to active duty--but Jim suspected Bones would tire of the extra effort fairly quickly. Sulu’s only side-effect seemed to be an increased propensity towards shirtlessness (which was great for morale, so Jim saw no reason to deal with it just yet).

Anyways, the one thing left to be done was to inform Spock of his decision. Which he was getting around to. Honestly.

Was it completely uncaptainly if Jim found the sight of a sheepish Spock just the tiniest bit amusing? No. No, of course it wasn’t. Jim was an awesome captain at all times.

“Captain, please permit me to assure you that my behaviour during recent events--”

“Yes, Spock, I know,” Jim offered. He was sympathetic. And magnificently magnanimous. “You were stoned out of your gigantic skull on bee venom.”

“I would not characterise--”

Jim waved a finger. He would brook no denials. “You were stoned. Wasted. Under the influence.”

Spock pursed his lips in the way that seemed to mean _fuck you_ in ever-so-polite Vulcan. Then he lowered his gaze. “In any case, Captain, since I have been declared medically fit by Doctors McCoy and M’Benga, I formally request permission to return to duty.”

Well, if they were going to get _formal_... Jim transferred his feet from his desktop to the floor. “Permission formally granted, Commander.”

“Thank you, Captain.” He turned to go.

“And Spock?” Spock turned. He appeared braced for some insensitive remark. Jim seemed to meet an awful lot of people who adopted this stance around him. “I think it’s time for a new hobby. Do you play chess?”

Spock stood there for one blink, two. Then he visibly got within three hundred yards of actually smiling. Oh, yeah. Jim Kirk was an awesome captain.

 

***END***


End file.
